By
any standard, Curtis Sittenfeld is a literary success. The truest indicator of
that success, beyond the publication of five novels (most of them bona fide
bestsellers), is her seeming ubiquity in the pages of The New Yorker. In the past year alone, Sittenfeld has scored three
stories in the most widely read and revered magazine still publishing fiction
today. Why, then, does she seem so insecure about her place in modern American
letters? And why does that phrase, “modern American letters,” have such a regrettable ring to it?
I
ask these questions because Sittenfeld’s most recent New Yorker story, a piece of barely-veiled auto-fiction set in an
elite MFA program, raises a stark dichotomy between two fortresses of the
American publishing kingdom: the “women’s fiction” Sittenfeld’s first person
narrator writes, and the highbrow, high-testosterone Literature that is the
province of men like her former classmate Bhadveer. The story, bearing the
cheeky title “Show Don’t Tell,” is very good – lyrical in a swift, utilitarian
sort of way and taut with an unexpected suspense (will Ruthie, the protagonist,
receive proper funding for the program’s next year?). Reading it, I was reminded why Sittenfeld keeps popping up in the magazine’s pages – she’s funny and
brisk, and her narrators sound like friends you haven’t seen in a while,
friends with riveting dispatches from the more mysterious (but always
relatable) frontiers of their inner lives.
But
what’s really interesting about “Show Don’t Tell” is the gendered divide,
between “women’s lit” and “Men’s Literature,” that Sittenfeld explores in each
of the story’s sections. The result is an odd bit of meta-performance on
Sittenfeld’s part, simultaneously self-empowering and -lacerating. In the
process, Sittenfeld’s Ruthie seems to want it both ways: to cast off a sexist
establishment that dismisses women’s literature as girlish chatter; and to beat
upon the gates of that establishment, to demand admission and recognition and,
if it’s not too much to ask, a big, fat literary prize or two.
Early
in the story, Ruthie encounters one of her male classmates – a student “who had
recently told [her] that everything [she] wrote gave off the vibe of
ten-year-old girls at slumber party” – in the campus bookstore, where he touts
Don DeLillo’s Mao II:
Then
Harold held up a copy of Mao II and
said, ‘If DeLillo isn’t the ombudsman of American letters right now, I’m at a
loss as to who is.’
‘I’ve
actually never read him,’ I said.
Harold’s
expression turned disapproving, and I added, ‘Lend me that when you’re finished
and I will.’
‘It’s
not mine,’ Harold said. ‘I just come in here and read twenty pages at a time.
But seriously, Ruthie – not even White
Noise?’
Harold is a
stand-in here for that masculinist literary culture, the establishment that props
up the white male literary genius, the Roth or Pynchon or McCarthy or DeLillo
who aims to capture the entirety of the American experience, the vaster the
better, in his books. In comparison, Ruthie’s work, with its vibe of slumber
party chit-chat, might seem very slight indeed. But what kind of asshole, the
scene asks us, uses “ombudsman” in everyday speech?
“Show Don’t Tell” is full of funny moments like this. For instance, Ruthie’s classmate
Bhadveer, in a moment of drunken misogyny, asserts that no beautiful woman has
ever produced a lasting piece of literature. This elicits a roll call of attractive,
important women writers from Ruthie, including such luminaries as Joan Didion,
Arundhati Roy, and, finally, Clarice Lispector:
‘Wait,’
I murmured to Bhadveer. ‘Clarice Lispector.’
Bhadveer
looked momentarily confused then shook his head. He said, ‘Clarice Lispector
was nothing special.’
Bhadveer is
lying through his teeth, of course, but the entire conversation is ridiculous
to begin with.
By
the end of the story, years after Ruthie’s graduation from the program, Ruthie
has become a successful writer of what she faintly disparages as “women’s
fiction,” an “actual term used by both publishers and bookstores… [that] means
something only slightly different from ‘gives off the vibe of ten-year-old
girls at a slumber party.’” Bhadveer, for his part, is a major writer of
prize-winning literature, a man of letters who’s “regularly interviewed on
public radio about literary culture.” But Bhadveer, Ruthie finds, is still a
misogynist and a blowhard. The critical success of his work cannot correct the
obvious bankruptcy of his soul.
Finally,
the story flashes back to the MFA days and ends with a hug between Ruthie and
her neighbor, an older female graduate student currently at work on a memoir.
They are celebrating, in this moment of feminine victory, the news that Ruthie
has received the program’s highest and most prestigious level of funding. Cue
the freeze frame, roll the credits. That’s a wrap!
A
story that so astutely illustrates the tensions between so-called women’s
fiction and the (arguably fading) Great Man literary tradition can hardly be
called slight. But it’s almost as if Sittenfeld wants to emphasize the story’s slightness, to play with and subvert the knotty
relationships between gender, ambition, and literary fame. In effect, Ruthie seems
nearly self-conscious about the weight and worth of her oeuvre while she simultaneously
derides the bloated self-praise of a male eminence like Bhadveer. "Women’s
fiction" is thus posed attractively, if tentatively, against the ugly, broad-shouldered
ambition of the Literary Establishment.
But
isn’t this story ambitious in its own way? Are Ruthie and Sittenfeld protesting
too much? And isn’t Sittenfeld a literary eminence herself? The answer to all
three questions is yes, even if Sittenfeld – published frequently in The New Yorker, a bestseller and an
honest artistic success – is no DeLillo.
You can read
“Show Don’t Tell” here.
B-B-B-B-BONUS POST!
Speaking
of DeLillo, it’s an odd coincidence that I read “Show Don’t Tell” while taking
a break from Falling Man. I’ve been
on a brief and enjoyable DeLillo kick, reading Libra and Falling Man in
quick succession. Libra, for what
it’s worth, is much better than the newer novel – DeLillo’s Oswald is mercurial, complex, somehow brilliant and stupid
at the same time, a full-dimensional human being embroiled in the events that
would “break the back of the twentieth century.” Falling Man, meanwhile, is
comparatively weak, a survivor’s domestic drama that fizzles in an oddly
anti-climactic final act. (I guess that’s what you get when you begin your novel
with a fiery depiction of 9/11.)
Libra, however, is a tour-de-force of form and style
I’d put on par with almost anything I’ve read in recent years – from Sixty Stories to Blood Meridian.
Anyway,
check out this DeLillo documentary, in which a donnish Don speaks directly to
you, the viewer, about his many Big Ideas concerning terrorism, writing, and
the power of crowds. The video includes snippets of Libra and, of course, Sittenfeld’s beloved Mao II.
